Use Case

If you want to install Android on you OpenMoko you can use Qi. The Android on Freerunner kernel image can be more than 2MB in size. The UBoot environment that comes with your FreeRunner is only able to boot a kernel of 2MB in size or less. Qi support kernel images greater than 2MB out of the box.

Limitations

no DFU-Mode - USB is not initialized at all (but you can always boot from NOR)

Both the lack of DFU and the boot menu are planned to be addressed by the backup / recovery rootfs.

FAT is not supported because it can't provide a rootfs, and Qi wants the kernel to come from the rootfs.

Defaults

If the kernel is found on uSD, Qi assumes the rootfs to be on the same partition as the kernel. In case of boot from NAND, it assumes that rootfs is also on NAND (just as u-boot does). See below for help with an extra /boot-partition. The default rootdelay is 1 second.

Files

/boot/uImage-GTA0[123].bin

Kernel images, Qi will look for (can be in either uImage (u-boot image) or zImage format, file name should still be uImage-GTA0[123].bin)

/boot/append-GTA0[123]

Additional kernel arguments. All arguments should be on the first and the only line separated by spaces, for example: "loglevel=8 rootdelay=5 " . Make sure you have an extra space after the last argument (space is no longer needed if the version is from 31 Jan or older)!

/boot/noboot-GTA0[123]

make Qi skip this partition

Speed up kernel resume for SHR

Since SHR (and perhaps other distributions as well) ouput log messages during resume which slow down the resume process by ca. 3 seconds it make sense there to append the following settings to /boot/append-GTA0[123]:

loglevel=1 quiet

The disadvantage of this speedup is that you won't see any lifesign of your phone until it starts the graphical user interface after adding these files, though.

Boot Order

Qi GTA02 Booting order

SD Partition 1

SD Partition 2

SD Partition 3

NAND

Memory Test

Qi will try to mount each SD partition as ext2 / 3, if that succeeds it will look for the kernel as /boot/uImage-GTA02.bin. If that is found, it'll be fetched, its CRC is checked and then it's booted into with a generated kernel commandline.

Kernel Commandline Generation

Qi commandline composition

Because Qi has no private stored state, it infers and composes a suitable kernel commandline on each boot.

One of its tasks is to scan NAND memory using the U-Boot dynparts rules to determine the start offset of the NAND partitions on this device, from that it forms the mtdparts kernel parameter that sets Linux's view of NAND partitioning.

The other thing it does is mount the "identity" partition and get from there the globally unique MAC address for the USB over Ethernet function instead of the random one that is otherwise used (If this doesn't work (like with a GTA01) you may use kernel-commandline parameters g_ether.dev_addr= and g_ether.host_addr= for the mac in device and host mode of the usb-ether module).

LED and Vibrator Signals

AUX LED is turned on either on:

Successful partition mount

Successful kernel pull

Successful initramfs pull

AUX LED is turned off and vibrator runs briefly either on:

Fail of kernel pull

Fail of initramfs pull

Fail of mount partition

Skipping of current boot possibility

AUX LED is turned off either on:

Start of the kernel

Start of the mem test

Start of the kernel pull

Start of the initramfs pull

One Blue shine every ~10 second: did not find any valid kernel to boot

About four RED shines per second: kernel panic.

Booting

A short press on the power button is enough to make Qi start booting. In a few seconds the backlight will be lit, but the kernel will not spew any console messages unless something is wrong. It may take up to 2 minutes (depends on distribution) until X is started during which there will be no visual feedback. Please be patient.

You can force debug messages on the LCM console by holding in the power button before Linux starts.

Choosing a Kernel

If a user presses the AUX button after successful partition mount and before start of the kernel pull (that is, while the red LED is on), this boot possibility is skipped (and GTA02 owners can feel vibration). So press power, release power, press aux, wait for vibration, release aux.

On versions newer than Jan 18 if a user holds the POWER button just before start of the kernel,
debugging parameters are added to the kernel command line and a lot of information is output to the screen.

Boot Menu

Qi's concept is to leave everything possible to Linux, that includes even the video init. Therefore Qi does NOT provide a boot menu. This should rather be implemented by a minimal Kernel, initramfs and menu system. It may be more comfortable for some users and may get them to switch from uboot to Qi. This does not exist yet (it's already implemented for some Angstrom-supported devices and for Zaurus, so porting should be relatively easy).

README

Tips, Tricks, Tweaks

General troubleshooting

Qi does not bring up the LCD backlight. If the backlight is lit, it means you have succeeded to boot into Linux.

If nothing else is happening or there is a panic, enable debugging messages as described below.

Enabling console messages

You can just hold in the power button, this automatically appends verbose debugging to the kernel commandline (loglevel=8).

If you always want verbose "dmesg" type debugging messages, you can do it like this:

[1]
If it's SD Card boot, just create a text file, e.g., for a GTA02 use

/boot/append-GTA02

on the rootfs in question, put in there

loglevel=8

and you'll see the messages on boot. If it's NAND right now you need to edit the default commandline in Qi for gta02.

/boot-Partition

If you have a separate partition for /boot, so that your kernel and rootfs are not in fact on the same partition, you will need to append a root= entry on the kernel commandline to override the default action of trying to use the partition where the kernel came from as the rootfs.

Add this in /boot/append-GTA0[123]:

root=/dev/mmcblk0p2

for a rootfs on the second partition.

Note that a default Debian installation puts the kernel straight in the root of /dev/mmcblk0p1, not in a boot subdirectory, expecting u-boot to mount it as /boot. In order for Qi to recognise this, create a boot subdirectory with a symlink to the kernel.

SD Initialisation

If you don't specify loglevel=8 in append-GTAXX, and booting fails with a "VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p1" or unknown-block(2,0)", the SD card needs a little bit more time to initialise.

This can be improved a lot by using the quiet option on the kernel command line !!!!!!!!!

1:18 Openmoko 'please wait' splash

1:31 desktop animated splash

2:38 finished booting

Why 1'20 min from OM splash to end of boot here
and only 1'00 for the Qi version ???
Qi has no relation to this !!!!!!!!!

Booting identical setup with Qi flashed over uBoot:

0:00 power button held down

0:06 backlit black

0:13 please wait booting... (only this text on console for next 38 seconds)

0:51 Angstrom console message (at the end of kernel output with uBoot, but ONLY text display to appear throughout this stage with Qi)

0:54 Openmoko 'please wait' splash

1:05 desktop animated splash

1:54 finished booting

So for this particular configuration, it reduced time-to-desktop by about 28%, about 44 seconds. Surprisingly, the later segments of booting (desktop) were also noticeably faster than with uBoot - One would have expected just the first stages up until init (kernel finished establishing itself) to be faster.

Use Case

If you want to install Android on you OpenMoko you can use Qi. The Android on Freerunner kernel image can be more than 2MB in size. The UBoot environment that comes with your FreeRunner is only able to boot a kernel of 2MB in size or less. Qi support kernel images greater than 2MB out of the box.

Limitations

no DFU-Mode - USB is not initialized at all (but you can always boot from NOR)

Both the lack of DFU and the boot menu are planned to be addressed by the backup / recovery rootfs.

FAT is not supported because it can't provide a rootfs, and Qi wants the kernel to come from the rootfs.

Defaults

If the kernel is found on uSD, Qi assumes the rootfs to be on the same partition as the kernel. In case of boot from NAND, it assumes that rootfs is also on NAND (just as u-boot does). See below for help with an extra /boot-partition. The default rootdelay is 1 second.

Files

/boot/uImage-GTA0[123].bin

Kernel images, Qi will look for (can be in either uImage (u-boot image) or zImage format, file name should still be uImage-GTA0[123].bin)

/boot/append-GTA0[123]

Additional kernel arguments. All arguments should be on the first and the only line separated by spaces, for example: "loglevel=8 rootdelay=5 " . Make sure you have an extra space after the last argument (space is no longer needed if the version is from 31 Jan or older)!

/boot/noboot-GTA0[123]

make Qi skip this partition

Speed up kernel resume for SHR

Since SHR (and perhaps other distributions as well) ouput log messages during resume which slow down the resume process by ca. 3 seconds it make sense there to append the following settings to /boot/append-GTA0[123]:

loglevel=1 quiet

The disadvantage of this speedup is that you won't see any lifesign of your phone until it starts the graphical user interface after adding these files, though.

Boot Order

Qi GTA02 Booting order

SD Partition 1

SD Partition 2

SD Partition 3

NAND

Memory Test

Qi will try to mount each SD partition as ext2 / 3, if that succeeds it will look for the kernel as /boot/uImage-GTA02.bin. If that is found, it'll be fetched, its CRC is checked and then it's booted into with a generated kernel commandline.

Kernel Commandline Generation

Qi commandline composition

Because Qi has no private stored state, it infers and composes a suitable kernel commandline on each boot.

One of its tasks is to scan NAND memory using the U-Boot dynparts rules to determine the start offset of the NAND partitions on this device, from that it forms the mtdparts kernel parameter that sets Linux's view of NAND partitioning.

The other thing it does is mount the "identity" partition and get from there the globally unique MAC address for the USB over Ethernet function instead of the random one that is otherwise used (If this doesn't work (like with a GTA01) you may use kernel-commandline parameters g_ether.dev_addr= and g_ether.host_addr= for the mac in device and host mode of the usb-ether module).

LED and Vibrator Signals

AUX LED is turned on either on:

Successful partition mount

Successful kernel pull

Successful initramfs pull

AUX LED is turned off and vibrator runs briefly either on:

Fail of kernel pull

Fail of initramfs pull

Fail of mount partition

Skipping of current boot possibility

AUX LED is turned off either on:

Start of the kernel

Start of the mem test

Start of the kernel pull

Start of the initramfs pull

One Blue shine every ~10 second: did not find any valid kernel to boot

About four RED shines per second: kernel panic.

Booting

A short press on the power button is enough to make Qi start booting. In a few seconds the backlight will be lit, but the kernel will not spew any console messages unless something is wrong. It may take up to 2 minutes (depends on distribution) until X is started during which there will be no visual feedback. Please be patient.

You can force debug messages on the LCM console by holding in the power button before Linux starts.

Choosing a Kernel

If a user presses the AUX button after successful partition mount and before start of the kernel pull (that is, while the red LED is on), this boot possibility is skipped (and GTA02 owners can feel vibration). So press power, release power, press aux, wait for vibration, release aux.

On versions newer than Jan 18 if a user holds the POWER button just before start of the kernel,
debugging parameters are added to the kernel command line and a lot of information is output to the screen.

Boot Menu

Qi's concept is to leave everything possible to Linux, that includes even the video init. Therefore Qi does NOT provide a boot menu. This should rather be implemented by a minimal Kernel, initramfs and menu system. It may be more comfortable for some users and may get them to switch from uboot to Qi. This does not exist yet (it's already implemented for some Angstrom-supported devices and for Zaurus, so porting should be relatively easy).

README

Tips, Tricks, Tweaks

General troubleshooting

Qi does not bring up the LCD backlight. If the backlight is lit, it means you have succeeded to boot into Linux.

If nothing else is happening or there is a panic, enable debugging messages as described below.

Enabling console messages

You can just hold in the power button, this automatically appends verbose debugging to the kernel commandline (loglevel=8).

If you always want verbose "dmesg" type debugging messages, you can do it like this:

[1]
If it's SD Card boot, just create a text file, e.g., for a GTA02 use

/boot/append-GTA02

on the rootfs in question, put in there

loglevel=8

and you'll see the messages on boot. If it's NAND right now you need to edit the default commandline in Qi for gta02.

/boot-Partition

If you have a separate partition for /boot, so that your kernel and rootfs are not in fact on the same partition, you will need to append a root= entry on the kernel commandline to override the default action of trying to use the partition where the kernel came from as the rootfs.

Add this in /boot/append-GTA0[123]:

root=/dev/mmcblk0p2

for a rootfs on the second partition.

Note that a default Debian installation puts the kernel straight in the root of /dev/mmcblk0p1, not in a boot subdirectory, expecting u-boot to mount it as /boot. In order for Qi to recognise this, create a boot subdirectory with a symlink to the kernel.

SD Initialisation

If you don't specify loglevel=8 in append-GTAXX, and booting fails with a "VFS: Cannot open root device "mmcblk0p1" or unknown-block(2,0)", the SD card needs a little bit more time to initialise.

This can be improved a lot by using the quiet option on the kernel command line !!!!!!!!!

1:18 Openmoko 'please wait' splash

1:31 desktop animated splash

2:38 finished booting

Why 1'20 min from OM splash to end of boot here
and only 1'00 for the Qi version ???
Qi has no relation to this !!!!!!!!!

Booting identical setup with Qi flashed over uBoot:

0:00 power button held down

0:06 backlit black

0:13 please wait booting... (only this text on console for next 38 seconds)

0:51 Angstrom console message (at the end of kernel output with uBoot, but ONLY text display to appear throughout this stage with Qi)

0:54 Openmoko 'please wait' splash

1:05 desktop animated splash

1:54 finished booting

So for this particular configuration, it reduced time-to-desktop by about 28%, about 44 seconds. Surprisingly, the later segments of booting (desktop) were also noticeably faster than with uBoot - One would have expected just the first stages up until init (kernel finished establishing itself) to be faster.